More than 200 screened at Savannah mammogram event

Technician Shay Smith is reflected in a mirror as she demonstrates the mammogram process to a patient Thursday during the mammogram-a-thon at the Mary Telfair Pavilion.

Richard Burkhart/Savannah Morning NewsTechnician Dede Jordan talks with Shirley Jones about the mammogram process Thursday during the mammogram-a-thon at the Mary Telfair Pavilion.

JaQuana Salgado, 31, woke up nervous.

Thursday marked one day shy of a year since she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and Salgado was scheduled to have her first post-cancer mammogram at 8 a.m.

A believer in the power of positive thought, she beat back nerves as she drove from Port Wentworth to Candler Hospital.

“I said, ‘Think positive, and positive will come.’”

Salgado has no family history of breast cancer. A sharp pain in the side of her breast alerted her to stage two cancer on Oct. 28, 2010. Doctors say the cancer is gone after the lump was surgically removed and Salgado underwent chemotherapy and radiation.

Salgado thinks her attitude has something to do with the fact that her Thursday mammogram didn’t show any signs of cancer.

“I feel great,” Salgado said after getting her results. “I don’t think people realize how much it’s in your mind, that you have to try to keep yourself positive.”

Salgado was one of 238 women who had a mammogram at four locations during Paint the Town Pink’s fourth annual Mammogram Day, sponsored in part by St. Joseph’s/Candler Hospital and the Savannah Morning News.

Lora Sapp — manager of the Telfair Pavilion at Candler Hospital, which offers outpatient women’s services — said organizers try to do more mammograms each year at the event.

They squeaked by this year, with three more mammograms than in 2010. Screenings were offered at the pavilion, on Reynolds Street; at the Telfair Breast Imaging Center, on Eisenhower Drive; at St. Joseph’s Hospital, on Mercy Boulevard; and in the hospital’s mobile mammography unit, parked at the St. Joseph’s/Candler Medical Group offices on Grand Central Boulevard in Pooler.

Sapp said the idea for the community-focused event is to serve as a public reminder of the importance of annual mammograms — particularly for busy, working women, who can lose track of when their last mammogram was.

Sapp said one woman who came in Thursday said she didn’t know whether or not it had been a year since her last screening.

Turns out, it’d been nearly three.

“We hope what this does is raise awareness and keep in the forefront of women’s minds that screening is important,” Sapp said.

When localized breast cancer is caught before it spreads to other parts of the body, it has a survival rate of more than 97 percent.

Annual exams are recommended for women 40 and over and all women who have a sister, mother or aunt who have had breast cancer.

Gwen Davis, a 47-year-old imaging librarian at Candler, is a firm believer in the importance of early detection. Asked why she got screened Thursday, her answer was simple, “because I’m over 40. I’m supposed to.”

All of Thursday’s mammograms were digital, and Davis said the procedure was pretty much painless.

GET SCREENED

To schedule a mammogram with St. Joseph’s/Candler, call 912-819-6800. The medical center maintains a mammography fund to help low-income women who don’t have health insurance, or whose insurance only allows screening every other year, get a mammogram. For more information on the fund, call 912-819-7055.